Rich speeders facing massive fines

GENEVA - European countries are increasingly pegging speeding fines to income as a way to punish wealthy scofflaws who would otherwise ignore tickets.

Advocates say a $290,000 speeding ticket slapped on a millionaire Ferrari driver in Switzerland was a fair and well-deserved example of the trend.

Germany, France, Austria and the Nordic countries also issue punishments based on a person's wealth. In Germany, the maximum fine can be as much as $16 million, compared with only $1 million in Switzerland. Only Finland regularly hands out similarly hefty speeding fines, with the record believed to be a 2004 ticket for about $190,000.

The Swiss court appeared to set a world record when it levied the fine in November on a man identified in the Swiss media only as "Roland S." Judges in the eastern canton of St. Gallen described him as a "traffic thug" in their verdict, which only recently came to light.

"As far as we're concerned this is very good," said Sabine Jurisch, a road-safety campaigner with the Swiss group Road Cross.

She said rich drivers were lightly punished until Swiss voters approved a 2007 penal-law overhaul that let judges hand down fines based on personal income.